Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Conspectus of Feuerbach’s BookLectures on the Essence of Religion

Written:1909Source:Lenin’sCollected Works,
			  4th Edition, Moscow, 1976,Volume 38, pp. 61-83Publisher:Progress PublishersFirst Published:1930
		      inLenin Miscellany XIITranslated:Clemence DuttEdited:Stewart SmithOriginal Transcription & Markup:R. Cymbala, &Marc Szewczyk,Re-Marked Up & Proofread by:Kevin Goins(2007)Public Domain:Lenin Internet Archive (2003).You may freely copy,  distribute,
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Conspectus ofFeuerbach’sbook “Vorlesungen über das Wesen der
		    Religion”(Lectures on the Essence
		    of Religion)is contained in a separate
		    notebook whose cover was not preserved. On the
		    first page in abbreviated form is written L.
		    Feuerbach,Sämtliche Werke,Band 8, 1851;
		    also indicated is the press-mark—8°. R. 807. There is no indication
		    exactly when the Conspectus was worked out by
		    Lenin. V. Adoratsky has suggested that it was
		    written in 1909 (Lenin Miscellany
		    XII). The following arguments speak in favour
		    of this hypothesis. It has been established that
		    the press-mark on the first page of the Conspectus
		    is that of the French National Library (Paris) in
		    which Lenin worked from January 13 to June 30,
		    1909. The contents ofLectures on the Essence
		    of Religionborders upon those works of
		    Feuerbach that were used by Lenin in 1908 in
		    writing his bookMaterialism and
		    Empirio-Criticism, and some of Lenin’s
		    remarks in the Conspectus are related to
		    propositions formulated in his book. In the
		    Conspectus, for example, Lenin notes:[[Feuerbach and natural science!!
		    NB. Cf. Mach and Co. today]], and inMaterialism and Empirio-Criticismhe
		    writes: “The philosophy of the scientist Mach
		    is to science what the kiss of the Christian Judas
		    was to Christ. Mach likewise betrays science into
		    the hands of fideism by virtually deserting to the
		    camp of philosophical idealism.”
		    (V. I. Lenin,Materialism and
		    Empirio-Criticism) Certain remarks in Lenin’s
		    Conspectus are also related to theses in his
		    article“On the Attitude of a Working-Class
		    Party to Religion,”written in May 1909.
			 
			 
	 Note that this document has undergone special formating to ensure that Lenin’s
	 sidenotes fit on the page, marking as best as possible where they were 
	 located in the original manuscript.

L. FEUERBACH. 
			COLLECTED WORKS, VOL. 8, 1851LECTURES ON THE ESSENCE OF 
			RELIGION

Theprefaceis dated 1. I. 1851.—Feu- 
 erbach speaks here of the reasons why  he did
 not take part in the 1848 revolu-  tion, which
 had “such a shameful, such  a barren
 end” (VII).[1]The revolution of  1848
 had no Orts- und Zeitsinn,[2]theconstitutionalistsexpected freedom
 from  theworddes Herrn,[3]therepublicans

(VII-VIII) from theirdesire(“it was only  necessary todesirea republic for it to  come into
 being”).... (VIII)

“If a revolution breaks out again and I 
 take an active part in it, then you can ... 
 be sure that this revolution will be vic- 
 torious, that Judgment Day for the mon- 
 archy and hierarchy has arrived.” (VII)

Second Lecture(12-20).

Third Lecture(21-30).

The objection was raised to myEssence  of
 Christianity[13]that for memandoes not depend on anything, “there was opposition 
 to this alleged deification of man by me.” 
 (24) “The being, whom man presupposes ... 
 isnothing other than nature, not your 
 God.” (25)

“The unconscious being of nature is for 
 me the eternal being, without origin, the 
 first being, but first in point of time, and 
 not in point of rank, the physically but 
 not morally first being....” (27)

My denial includes also affirmation.... 
 “It is, of course, a consequence of my doc- 
 trine that there is no God” (29), but this 
 follows from the conception of the essence 
 of God (=an expression of the essence 
 of nature, of the essence of man).

Fourth Lecture.

“The feeling of dependence is the basis 
                 of religion.” (31) (“Furcht”[14]33-4-5-6)

“The so-called speculative philosophers 
 are ...thosephilosophers who do not con- 
 struct their notions in accordance with 
 things, but rather construct things accord- 
 ing to their notions.” (31)

(Fifth Lecture).

— it is especiallydeaththat arouses 
 fear, belief in God. (41)

“I hate the idealism that divorces man 
 from nature; I am not ashamed of my de- 
 pendence on nature.” (44)

“As little as I have deified man inWesen 
 des Christenthums, a deification with which 
 I have been stupidly reproached ... so little 
 do I want to deify nature in the sense 
 of theology....” (46-47)

Sixth Lecture — The cult of animals (50 
 u. ff.[16]).

“What man is dependent on is ... nature, 
 an object of the senses ... all the impressions 
 which nature makes on man through the 
 senses ... can become motives of religious 
 veneration.” (55)

(Seventh Lecture.)

By egoism I understand, not the egoism 
 of the “philistine and bourgeois” (63), but 
 the philosophical principle of conformity 
 with nature, with human reason, against 
 “theological hypocrisy, religious and spec- 
 ulative fantasy, political despotism.” (63 
 i. f.) Cf.64very important.

Idem 68 i. f. and 69 i. f. — Egoism (in the 
 philosophical sense) is the root of religion.

See p. 112 on the veracity (Urkunden[19])   
			    of the senses.

“Thus,Die Grundsätze der
 Philosophieis interconnected with theWesen der Re- ligion.”[21](113)

“I deify nothing, consequently not even 
 nature.” (115)

“I understand by nature the total- 
				  ity of all sensuous forces, things and 
				  beings which man distinguishes from

himself as not human.... Or, if the 
				  word is taken in practice: nature is 
				  everything that for man—indepen- 
				  dent of the supernatural whisperings

of theistic faith—proves to be imme- 
 diate and sensuous, the basis and 
				  object of his life. Nature is light, 
				  electricity, magnetism, air, water, 
				  fire, earth, animal, plant, man, in-

sofar as he is a being acting involun- 
				  tarily and unconsciously—by the word  
				  ‘nature’ I understand nothing more 
				  than this, nothing mystical, nothing 
 nebulous, nothing theological” (above: 
 in contrast to Spinoza).

...“Nature is ... everything that you see 
 and that is not derived from human hands 
 and thoughts. Or if we penetrate into the 
 anatomy of nature, nature is the being, 
 or totality of beings and things, whose 
 appearances, expressions or effects, in which 
 precisely in their existence and essence are 
 manifested and consist, have their basis 
 not in thoughts or intentions and decisions 
 of the will, but in astronomical, or cosmic, 
 mechanical, chemical, physical, physiolo- 
 gical or organic forces or causes.” (116-117)

[Here too it amounts to opposing matter 
 to mind, the physical to the psychical.] 
 121 — against the argument that there must 
 be a prime cause (= God).

“It is only man’s narrowness and love of 
 convenience that cause him to put eternity 
 in place of time, infinity in place of the 
 endless progress from cause to cause, a stat- 
 ic divinity in place of restless nature, 
 eternal rest instead of eternal movement.” 
 (121 i. f.)

Yet, “no objective validity and exist- 
 ence, no existence outside ourselves” must 
 be ascribed to these abstractions. (125)

...“Nature has no beginning and no end. 
 Everything in it is in mutual interaction, 
 everything is relative, everything at once 
 effect and cause, everything in it is all- 
 sided and reciprocal....” (129)

there is no place there for God (129-130; 
 simple arguments against God).

...“The cause of the first and general 
 cause of things in the sense of the 
 theists, theologians and so-called spec- 
 ulative philosophers is man’s under- 
 standing....” (130) “God is ... cause in 
 general, the concept of cause as essence 
 personified and become independent....” 
 (131)

“God is abstract nature, i.e., nature re- 
 moved from sensuous perception, mentally 
 conceived, made into an object or being

of the understanding; nature in the proper 
 sense is sensuous, real nature, as immedi- 
 ately manifested and presented to us by 
 the senses.” (133)

The theists see in God the cause of the 
 movement in nature (which they make into 
 a dead mass or matter). (134) The power of 
 God, however, is in reality thepower of 
 nature(Naturmacht: 135).

...“Indeed it is only through their effects 
 that we perceive the properties of things....” 
 (136)

Atheism (136-137) abolishes neitherdas 
 moralische Über(= das Ideal)[24]nordas  natürliche
 Über(= die Natur.)[25]

...“Is not time merely a form of the 
 world, the manner in which particular 
 beings and effects follow one another? How 
 then can I ascribe a temporal beginning 
 to the world?” (145)

...“God is merely the world in thought.... 
 The distinction between God and the world 
 is merely the distinction between spirit 
 and sense, thought and perception....” (146)

God is presented as a being existing out-

side ourselves. But is that not precisely 
 an admission of the truth of sensuous being? 
 Is it not (thereby) “recognised that there 
 is no being outside sensuous being? For, 
 apart from sensuousness, have we any 
 other sign, any other criterion, of an exist- 
 ence outside ourselves, of an existence in- 
 dependent of thought?” (148)

...“Nature ... in isolation from its mate- 
 riality and corporeality ... is God....” (149)

“To derive nature from God is equivalent

to wanting to derive the original from the 
 image, from the copy, to derive a thing

from the thought of the thing.” (149)

Characteristic of man is Verkehrtheit  (149
 i. f.) verselbständigen[26]abstractions— 
				  for example,time(150) andspace:

“Although ... man has abstracted space 
 and time from spatial and temporal things, 
 nevertheless he presupposes those as the 
 primary grounds and conditions of the 
 latter’s existence. Hence he thinks of the 
 world, i.e., the sum-total of real things, 
 matter, the content of the world, as having 
 its origininspace and time. Even Hegel 
 makes matter arise not only in, but out of,

space and time....” (150)
 “Also, it is really  incomprehensible why
 time, separated from  temporal things, should not
 be identified  with God.” (151)

...“In reality, exactly the opposite holds 
 good, ...it is not things that presuppose 
 space and time, but space and time that 
 presuppose things, for space or extension

presupposes something that extends, and 
 time, movement, for time is indeed only a 
 concept derived from movement, presup- 
 poses something that moves. Everything is 
 spatial and temporal....” (151-152)

“The question whether a God has created 
 the world ... is the question of the relation 
 of mind to sensuousness” (152—the most 
 important and difficult question of philos-

ophy, the whole history of philosophy 
 turns on this question (153)—the conflict 
 between the Stoics and the Epicureans, 
 the Platonists and the Aristotelians, the 
 Sceptics and the Dogmatists, in ancient 
 philosophy; between the nominalists and

realists in the Middle Ages; between the 
 idealists and the “realists or empiricists”

(sic! 153) in modern times.

It depends in part on the nature of people 
 (academic versus practical types) whether 
 they incline to one or another philosophy.

“I do not deny ... wisdom, goodness, 
 beauty; I deny only that, as such generic 
 notions, they are beings, whether in the 
 shape of gods or properties of God, or as 
 Platonic ideas, or as self-posited Hegelian 
 concepts....” (158)—they exist only as prop- 
 erties ofmen.

Another cause of belief in God: man 
 transfers to nature the idea of his own 
 purposive creation. Nature is purposive— 
 ergo it was created by a rational being. (160)

“That which man calls the purposiveness 
 of nature and conceives as such is in real- 
 ity nothing but the unity of the world, 
 the harmony of cause and effect, the in- 
 terconnection in general in which every- 
 thing in nature exists and acts.” (161)

...“Nor have we any grounds for imagin- 
 ing that if man had more senses or organs 
 he would also cognise more properties or 
 things of nature. There is nothing more 
 in the external world, in inorganic nature, 
 than in organic nature. Man has just as 
 many senses as are necessary for him to 
 conceive the world in its totality, in its 
 entirety.” (163)

Where doesspirit(Geist) come from?— 
 ask the theists of the atheist. (196) They 
 have too disdainful (despektierliche: 196)

an idea of nature, too lofty an idea
 of spir-  it (zu hohe, zu vornehme (!!)
 Vorstel-  lung[29]).

Even a Regierungsrath[31]cannot be 
 directly explained from nature. (197)

“The spirit develops together with the 
 body, with the senses ... it is connected 
 with the senses ... whence the skull, whence 
 the brain, thence also the spirit; whence 
 an organ, thence also its functioning” ((197): 
 cf. above (197) “the spirit isin the head”).

“Mental activity is also a bodily activi- 
 ty.” (197-198)

The origin of the corporeal world from the

spirit, from God, leads to the creation of 
 the world from nothing—“for whence does 
 the spirit get the matter, corporeal sub- 
 stances, if not from nothing?” (199)

...“Nature is corporeal, material, sen- 
 suous....” (201)

Jakob Boehme = a “materialistic 
 theist” (202): he deifies not only the 
 mind but also matter. For him God is ma- 
 terial—therein lies his mysticism. (202)

...“Where the eyes and hands begin, there 
 the gods end.” (203)

(The theists) have “blamed matter or 
 theinevitable necessity of na- 
 ture... for the evil in nature” (212)

I abolish (aufhebe) religion “onlyin- 
 sofar” (Feuerbach’s italics) “as it isnotpoetry, but ordinary prose.” (233)

Art does not require the recognition of 
 its works asreality. (233)

Besides fantasy, of great importance in 
 religion are das Gemüth[35](261), theprac-  ticalaspect (258), the search
 for the better,  for protection, help, etc.

(263)—In religion one seeksconsolation(atheism is alleged to be trostlos[36]).— — —

“A concept, however, congenial to man’s 
 self-love, is that nature does not act with 
 immutable necessity, but that above the 
 necessity of nature is ... a being that loves 
 mankind.” (264)And in the next 
 sentence“Naturnotwendigkeit”[37]of  the falling of a
 stone. (264)

Religion = childishness, the childhood 
 of mankind (269), Christianity has made 
 a god ofmorality, it has created amoral 
 God. (274)

Religion is rudimentary education—one

can say: “education is true
		      	  religion....”  (275) “However, this
		      	  is ... a misuse of  words, for superstitious
		      	  and inhuman ideas  are always linked with the
		      	  word religion.”  (275)

Eulogy ofeducation—(277).

“Superficialview and
 assertion ... that  religion is absolutely of no
 concern to  life, namely to public, political
 life.” (281)

I would not give a farthing for a
 political  freedom that allows man to be a
 slave  of religion. (281)

Religion is innate in man (“this state- 
 ment ... simply means”) = superstition is 
 innate in man. (283)

“The Christian has a free cause of nature, 
 a lord of nature, whose will, whose word, 
 nature obeys, a God who is not bound by the 
 so-called causal nexus, by necessity, by the 
 chain which links effect to cause and cause

to cause, whereas the heathen god is
 bound  by the necessity of nature and cannot
 save  even his favourites from the fatal
 necessity  of dying.” (301) (Thus Feuerbach
 says sys-

tematically: NotwendigkeitderNatur.)

“The Christian, however, has a free
 cause  because in his wishes he is not bound
 by  the interconnection of nature, nor by the 
 necessity of nature.” (301) ((Andthree 
 timesmoreonthispage. Notwendig-

keitderNatur.))

And p. 302: “...allthe laws or natural 
 necessitiesto which human existence is 
 subjected....” (302)

“To make nature dependent on God, means 
 to make the world order, the necessity of 
 nature, dependent on the will.” (312) And

p. 313 (above)—“Naturnotwendigkeit”!!

In religious ideas “we have ... examples- 
				  how in general man converts the subject- 
				  ive into the objective, that is to say, he makes 
				  that which exists only in his thought only in 
				  his thought, conception, imagination into 
				  something existingoutside thought,

conception,
 imagination....” (328)

“So Christians tear the spirit, the soul, 
 of man out of his body and make this 
 torn-out, disembodied spirit into their God.” 
 (332)

Religion gives (332) man an ideal. Man 
               needs an ideal, but a human ideal corres- 
               ponding to nature and not a supernatural 
               ideal:

“Let our ideal be no castrated, disem- 
               bodied, abstract being, let our ideal be the 
               whole, real, all-sided, perfect, developed 
               man.” (334)

“Man has no idea, no conception, of 
				  any other reality, of any other existence, 
 than sensuous, physical existence....” 
				  (334)

“If one is not ashamed to allow the sen- 
 suous, corporeal world to arise from the 
 thought and will of a spirit, if one is not

ashamed to assert that things are not 
 thought of because they exist, but that 
 they exist because they are thought of;

then let one also not be ashamed to allow 
 things to arise from the word; then let one 
 also not be ashamed to assert that words 
 exist not because things exist, but that 
 things exist only because words exist.” 
 (341-342)

A God without the immortality of the 
 soul of man is only a God in name:

...“Such a God is ... the God of some 
 rationalist natural scientists, who is noth- 
 ing but personified nature or natural 
 necessity, the universe, with which of course 
 the idea of immortality is incompatible.”

The last (30th) lecture, pp. (358-370), 
 could be put forward almost in its entirety 
 as a typical example of an enlightening 
 atheism with a socialist tint (concerning 
 the mass that suffers want, etc., p. 365 
 middle), etc. Final words: it was my task 
 to make you, my hearers,

“from friends of God into friends of man, 
 from men of faith into thinkers, from men 
 of prayer into workers, from candidates 
 for the beyond into students of this world,

from Christians, who, as they themselves 
 acknowledge and confess, are ‘half- 
 beast, half-angel,’into men, wholemen” 
 (370 end).

Here there are many details, quotations, 
 which contain repetitions. I pass over all 
 that. I note only the most important of 
 that which affords some interest: the 
 basis of morality is egoism (392). (“Love 
 of life, interest, egoism”)... “there is

not only a singular or personal, but 
 also a social egoism, a family egoism, 
 a corporation egoism, a community egoism, 
 a patriotic egoism.” (393)

...“The good is nothing but that which 
 corresponds to the egoism of all men....” 
 (397)

“One has only to cast a glance at history!

Where does a new epoch in history begin? 
 Only wherever an oppressed mass or major- 
 ity makes its well-justified egoism effec- 
 tive against the exclusive egoism of a na- 
 tion or caste, wherever classes of men (sic!) 
 or whole nations, by gaining victory over

the arrogant self-conceit of a patrician mi- 
 nority, emerge into the light of historical 
 glory out of the miserable obscurity of

the proletariat. So, too, the egoism of the 
 now oppressed majority of mankind must 
 and will obtain its rights and found a new 
 epoch in history. It is not that the aristoc-

racy of culture, of the spirit, must be abol- 
 ished; no indeed! it is merely that not 
 just a handful should be aristocrats and all 
 others plebeians, but that all should— 
 at leastshould—be cultured; it is not that 
 property in general should be abolished; 
 no indeed! it is merely that not just a hand- 
 ful should have property, and all others 
 nothing; all should have property.” (398)

Examples from the classics of the use 
 of the wordsGodandnaturewithout dis- 
 tinction. (398-399)

Pp.402-411—anexcellent,phi- 
				  losophical(and at the same time simple  and clear)
 explanation of the essence of  religion.

“In the final analysis, the secret of
 reli-  gion is only the secret of the
 combination  in one and the same being of
 consciousness  with the unconscious, of the will
 with the  involuntary.” (402). TheEgoand thenon-

Egoare inseparably connected in man. 
 “Man does not grasp or endure the depths 
 of his own being and therefore splits it into 
 an 'Ego’ without a ‘non-Ego,’ which he

calls God, and a ‘non-Ego’ without an 
 ‘Ego,’ which he calls nature.” (406)

P. 408—an excellent quotation from Sen- 
 eca (against the atheists) that they make  nature
 into a god. Pray!—Work![44](p. 411)

Nature is God in religion, but nature

as Gedankenwesen.[45]“The secret of re- 
				  ligion is ‘the identity of the
 subjective  and objective,’i. e., the
 unity of the being

of man and nature, but as distinct from the 
 real being of nature and mankind.” (411)

“Human ignorance is bottomless and the 
 human force of imagination is boundless; 
 the power of nature deprived of its foun- 
 dation by ignorance, and of its bounds 
 by fantasy, is divine omnipotence.” (414)

...“Objective essence as subjective, the 
 essence of nature as different from nature, 
 as human essence, the essence of man as

different from man, as non-human essence—

that is the divine being, that is the essence 
 of religion, that is the secret of mysticism 
 and speculation....” (415)

“Man separates in thought the adjective

from the substantive, the property from 
 the essence.... And the metaphysical God 
 is nothing but the compendium, the total- 
 ity of the most general properties extracted 
 from nature, which, however, man by 
 means of the force of imagination—and 
 indeed in just this separation from sen- 
 suous being, matter, nature—reconverts 
 into an independent subject or being.”

The same role is played byLogic((418)—  obviously Hegel is
 meant)—which convertsdasSein,dasWesen[46]into a special
 real-  ity—“how stupid it is to want to
 make

metaphysical existence into a physical one, 
 subjective existence into an objective one, 
 and again logical or abstract existence into 
 an illogical real existence!” (418)

...“Is there, therefore, an eternal gulf 
 and contradiction between being and think- 
 ing?’ Yes, but only in the mind; however 
 in reality the contradiction has long been 
 resolved, to be sure only in a way corres- 
 ponding to reality and not to your school 
 notions, and, indeed, resolved by not fewer 
 than five senses.” (418)

“The head is the house of representa-

tives of the universe”—and if our

heads are stuffed with
 abstractions,  Gattungsbegriffen,[48]then of course  we
 derive (ableiten) “the individual  from the
 universal, i.e., ... nature  from God.”

Interesting is the answer to (Feuerbach’s) 
 critic Professorvon Schaden(448- 
 449) and toSchaller. (449-450-463)

...“I do indeed expressly put nature  in
 place of being, and man in place of think- 
 ing,” i.e., not an abstraction, but
 something  concrete— — —diedramatischePsycholo-  gie.[49](449)

“Jesuitism, the unconscious original and 
 ideal of our speculative philosophers.” (455)

“Thinking posits the discreteness of real- 
 ity as a continuum, the infinite multiplic- 
 ity of life as an identical singularity. 
 Knowledge of the essential, inextinguishable 
 difference between thought and life (or 
 reality) is the beginning of all wisdom 
 in thinking and living. Only the distinc- 
 tion is here the true connection.” (458)

End of Volume 8

[1]Feuerbach, L.,Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 8, Leipzig,
 1851.—Ed.

[2]sense of place and
 time—Ed.

[3]of the
 monarch—Ed.

[4]“God-believing
 world”—Ed.

[5]Zeile 7 von unten—line
 7 from bottom—Ed.

[6]at the
 end—Ed.

[7]to
 discard—Ed.

[8]“extravagant”—Ed.

[9]sensuousness—Ed.

[10]sensuous—Ed.

[11]stomach—Ed.

[12]head—Ed.

[13]Das Wesen des
 Christentums(The Essence of
 Christianity)by L. Feuerbach was
 published in 1841. In this work, Feuerbach takes a
 firm materialist position in philosophy.

[14]“fear”—Ed.

[15]The reference is toThe
 Holy Familyby Frederick Engels and Karl Marx,
 in which the authors wrote that Feuerbach outlined
 “in a masterlymanner the general basic
 features of Hegel’s speculationand henceof every kind of metaphysics.” (Marx
 and Engels,The Holy Family, Moscow, 1956,
 pp. 186-187.)

[16]und folgende—et
 seq.—Ed.

[17]the
 pundits—Ed.

[18]energy, i.e.,
 activity—Ed.

[19]evidence—Ed.

[20]underivable primordial
 being—Ed.

[21]Das Wesen der Religion(The Essence of Religion) by
 L. Feuerbach was published in 1846.Grundsätze
 der Philosophie der Zukunft(Principles of
 the Philosophy of the Future)was
 published in 1843.

[22]summation—Ed.

[23]objective = outside
 ourselves—Ed.

[24]the moral
 highest(= the ideal)—Ed.

[25]the natural
 highest(= nature)—Ed.

[26]perversity of endowing
 abstractions with independence—Ed.

[27]The reference is to the
 well-known passage on the basic question of
 philosophy in Engels’ bookLudwig
				  Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy(see Marx and Engels,Selected Works,Vol.  II,
 Moscow, 1958, pp. 369-370).

[28]Lenin contrasts here the
 attitude toward natural science of Feuerbach, the
 materialist, and of Mach, the subjective idealist. A
 critical evaluation of Mach’s attitude toward
 natural science is given by Lenin inMaterialism
 and Empirio-Criticism(see V. I. Lenin,Materialism and Empirio-Criticism,Moscow,
 1960, pp. 363-364).

[29]too lofty, too noble (!!)
 an idea—Ed.

[30]Josef Dietzgendeveloped
 analogous ideas. For example, in the bookThe
 Nature of the Workings of the Human Mind(Sämtliche Werke,Bd. 1, Stuttgart,
 1922), in the paragraph “Spirit and
 Matter,” he wrote: “Long ago, mainly
 during early Christianity, it became customary to
 look with disdain upon material, sensual and carnal
 things, which become moth-eaten and rusty”
 (p. 53).

[31]a state
 counsellor—Ed.

[32]Josef Dietzgen wrote as
 follows inThe Nature of the Workings of the
 Human Mind(Sämtliche Werke,Bd. 1,
 Stuttgart, 1922), in the chapter “Pure Reason
 or the Capacity to Think in General”:
 “Thinking is a function of the brain, just as
 writing is a function of the hand” (p. 11) and
 further “... the reader will not misunderstand
 me when I call the capacity to think a material
 power,a sensuous phenomenon”
 (p. 13).

[33]the “natural”
 and “civil world”—Ed.

[34]spiritual
 religion—Ed.

[35]feeling—Ed.

[36]comfortless—Ed.

[37]“natural
 necessity”—Ed.

[38]“necessity of
 nature”—Ed.

[39]“course of
 nature”—Ed.

[40]disembodied
 spirit—Ed.

[41]sensuous,
 physical—Ed.

[42]See Lenin’s notations inPlekhanov’sbookN. G. Chernyshevsky(pp.
 537-538, 540, 545, 546, 551-552 and 554 of this
 volume).

[43]Neue Rheinische
 Zeitung(New Rhine Gazette)was published by Marx in Cologne from June 1,
 1848 to May 19, 1849.

Engels’ bookThe Condition of the
 Working Class in Englandwas published in
 1845. Regarding the significance of this book, see
 V. I. Lenin, pres. ed., Vol. 2, Moscow, 1960,
 pp. 22-23.

[44]Lenin is referring to the
 following passage in Feuerbach’s bookVorlesungen über das Wesen der
 Religion.Werke, Bd. 8, 1851, S. 411(Lectures on the Essence
				  of Religion,)Works, Vol. 8, 1851, p. 411):
 “... godliness consists, so to speak, of two
 component parts, of which one belongs to man’s
 fantasy, the other to nature. Pray!—says one
 part, i.e., God, distinct from nature; work!—says
 the other part, i.e., God, not distinct from nature,
 but merely expressing its Essence; for nature is the
 working bee, Gods—the drones.”

[45]thought
 entity—Ed.

[46]being,
 essence—Ed.

[47]All that is not God is
 nothing, i.e., all that is not I is
 nothing.—Ed.

[48]generic
 concepts—Ed.

[49]dramaticpsychology—Ed.

[50]The Anthropological
 Principle—Feuerbach’s thesis that, in
 discussing philosophical questions, it is necessary
 to consider man as part of nature, as a biological
 being.

The anthropological principle was
 directed against religion and idealism. However, by
 considering man apart from the concrete historical
 and social relations, the anthropological principle
 leads to idealism in the understanding of the laws
 of historical development.

N. G. Chernyshevsky,
				  in struggling against idealism,
 also took the anthropological principle as his
 starting-point and devoted a special work to this
 question under the title “The Anthropological
 Principle in Philosophy” (see N.
 G. Chernyshevsky,Selected Philosophical Essays,Moscow, 1953, pp. 49-135).

[51]The reference is to
 L. Feuerbach’sTheogonie nach den Quellen des
 klassischen, hebräischen und christlichen
 Altertums.Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 9, 1857
 (Theogony Based on Sources of Classical, Hebrew
 and Christian Antiquity, Collected Works,
 Vol. 9, 1857). Page 320—beginning of § 34, which
 is headed “‘Christian’ Natural Science”;
 page 334 is in § 36, which is headed “The
 Theoretical Basis of Theism.”